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       The  GNU ranlib program is another form of GNU ar; running
       ranlib is completely equivalent to executing ar -s.

Does ar -s work for you?  Then we might switch to this more portable
form..

 > cp etc/codecs.conf .
 > cp DOCS/mplayer.1 .
 > 
 > Then I edited the Makefile and modified these lines:
 > 
 > $(INSTALL) -c -m DOCS/mplayer.1 $(MANDIR)/man1/mplayer.1
 > changed to
 > $(INSTALL) -m mplayer.1 $(MANDIR)/man1/
 > 
 > $(INSTALL) -c -m etc/codecs.conf $(CONFDIR)/codecs.conf
 > changed to
 > $(INSTALL) -m codecs.conf $(CONFDIR)/
 > 
 > This should be done because the "install" program on IRIX gives a weird "file 
 > not found" error when specifying a destination file instead of a destination 
 > dir. (Well, no, obviously, you didn't install the file yet, so ofcourse it 
 > isn't there yet! Duh.)
 > And when doing the install with specifying the destination dir, it will also 
 > create the subdirs where the original file is located in (so there would be a 
 > $(MANDIR)/man1/DOCS/mplayer.1 instead of the required 
 > $(MANDIR)/man1/mplayer.1)

Why not simply use GNU install?

 > Things to note about mplayer on IRIX:
 > - Video output on x11 seems to be not supported. The error "RGB32 not 
 > supported on big-endian systems, please contact the developers. FATAL: Cannot 
 > initialize video driver!" is shown
 > - Only video outputs on the screen that are left then are gl and gl2 (OpenGL 
 > outputs) which are extremely slow.
 > - Audio output using "-ao sgi": everything initialises fine. "Start 
 > playing..." appears. Then immediately *crash* with error: "MPlayer 
 > interrupted by signal 11 in module: decode_audio. (the other available -ao 
 > option "mpegpes" gives error "couldn't open/init audio device -> no sound"
 > 
 > Overall not realy that useful yet, but hey, atleast it compiled :-)))
 > 
 > Maybe worth to put the hints on building it, in the documentation.

Yes, you sound like the perfect person to provide a patch :-)

Diego